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4/02/2014

Everyone's a winner, baby...

Boeing‘s
Randy Tinseth can’t resist to screw every statistics in his (i.e. Boeing’s )
favour. This makes him of course no different from John Leahy, head of sales at
Airbus. Now, after Air Canada firmed up their order for 61 B737MAX yesterday,
Tinseth claimed that the B737MAX gained more than 50% of the market since it’s
first order. Granted – Boeing has now 1908 firm orders for the B737MAX in the
books and Airbus sold “just” 1521 A320neo since the first order for the B737MAX
from Southwest Airlines. But does that really matter? Boeing’s first firm order
for the B737MAX from Southwest Airlines in December 2011 came more than one
year after the launch of the A320neo on Dec. 1st, 2010 and Airbus
booked the first order for the A320eo from Virgin America in late December that
year. By the time of the first B737MAX order Airbus already had 1,176 firm
orders for the A320neo family and so they had 89.55% of the market (“Neo vs.
MAX”).

In 2012, the first full year where the B737MAX was available,
Boeing had the upper hand: 949 firm order for the B737MAX meant a 66.5% market
share for that year with Airbus being in the overall lead with 61.6% (1,764 vs.
1,099 orders).

In 2013 the picture reversed in favor of Airbus –they sold another
937 A320neo aircraft where Boeing gained “only” 703. Overall Airbus held a
market share of 59.7%.

Until today in 2014 Boeing sold 117 B737MAX – Airbus sold 57
A320neo. So one could conclude that the market lead for Airbus dwindles away. But
there are a few large already won campaigns for Airbus to be firmed up: Tigerair (37 A/C), China Eastern
(70 A/C), ANA (30 A/C) and a few others – like Monarch – are waiting for their
winner. So I guess Airbus’s John Leahy will soon have an answer for Tinseth’s
anaylsis with his own statistics.

The better choice than throwing with statistics would maybe be that both gentlemen would unite to sing the Hot Chocolate song "Everyone's a winner" - although I cannot imagine them singing together the line "Making love to you is such a thrill..."...

In retrospective, the decision by Airbus to launch the A320neo brought record full order books for both and helped both to fend off Bombardier's CSeries. And there is some truth of course in the claim that SVP Andy Shankland from Airbus made at the ISTAT America this year, that it would be fair to say that the B737MAX was launched in Toulouse. So Randy could bring a bottle of wine to the party to celebrate their appearance in front of the aviation audience. I would give a fortune to see and hear them...